September 7, 2006: Washington Post Columnist: Journalists Owe Rove an Apology for Believing He Leaked Plame Wilson’s Identity

David Broder. [Source: Washington Post]Washington Post columnist David Broder dismisses the entire Patrick Fitzgerald investigation as nothing more than an “overblown” morass of “[c]onspiracy theories” based on “dark suspicions” that White House political strategist Karl Rove leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the public (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). According to Broder, there is no evidence that Rove either leaked Plame Wilson’s name to the press or “masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph Wilson by ‘outing’ his CIA-operative wife” (see October 1, 2003). The entire issue is nothing more, Broder writes, than “a tempest in a teapot.” He says no one involved—Rove, Fitzgerald, another accused leaker, Lewis Libby, or the reporters involved, “behaved well in the whole mess,” and Broder writes that he stayed out of it except “to caution reporters who offered bold First Amendment defenses for keeping their sources’ names secret that they had better examine the motivations of the people leaking the information to be sure they deserve protection.” Critics of the Bush administration are indulging in “rants” about Rove and the White House’s approach to handling criticism, Broder writes. He concludes that reporters who criticized Rove and the White House “owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.” [Washington Post, 9/7/2006] Two months before, Novak revealed Rove as one of his sources for Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status (see July 12, 2006).